printz's Doomworld Forums Blog

Wolfenstein plots are awesome

August 24, 2016, 3:41 pm

I'm feeling that every Wolfenstein campaign that I've played - be it official game or mod - has been highly insightful and even educational. I don't care that it's obviously fiction, exaggerated and fantasized. All of them have highly elaborate stories which show that the authors did their research on history before writing the fiction.

Virtually all games so far have been great at keeping the time period adequate with regards to real technology, and they have proper music and atmosphere. And occult conspiration stuff goes well with stuff like human experiments and skull/crossbone (SS Totenkopf) insignia, as well as sociopathic leader behaviour in general. And it's not far-fetched in real life either. It does give you clues of what peoples can do.

Whenever I see a documentary about stuff such as the Holocaust, I want to play some Wolfenstein as a way to relieve the inevitable anger. Is this whole Wolfenstein / Nazi extermination an example of hate for hate? All these games basically treat Nazis as monsters, as acceptable targets. OK, it's just in-game self defense, you kill them so they don't do it first. But otherwise, nobody would dare to pick other kinds of political enemies as first-person-shooter targets, lest such games become bannable controversies. I've noticed that most games put you againt non-sapient predatory aliens, which is morally very safe. Wolf puts you against human perversion.

I'm so glad that the Wolfenstein series is not dead at all (in fact it has even better backing than Doom, which nearly died at some point) and I'm really looking forward to Tormentor667's new mod!

Just got myself the German version of RTCW. I absolutely appreciate that being German, the voice actors pronounce Wolfenstein properly, and not like Oolfenstine.

This is in blogs because I had a dream that Doom 3 modding is extinct: all the editing resources and tutorials have gone offline (dead links), let alone communities, not even Google could find them. No more websites to download mods from (now I know that moddb, filefront (for some countries) and doomwadstation still exist). Source ports and tools have long stopped development, and never went far anyway. No more attention from id. I wonder how far from the truth this is, especially with the Doom 4 hype and people jumping ship.

I've noticed there's no longer a search box at the bottom of the Doomworld blogs forum. I liked using it a lot when searching for old comedy to read on the blogs. Is it still possible to search that forum, or is it gone forever?

Years ago I would be excited of playing Doom, toying with modding and even programming. I was a student back then and daily compulsory activity wasn't very demanding. Nowadays I have a fulltime programming job and one of the last things I want when I get home is sit more at the computer doing the same game stuff because they either seem too work-like or chores (modding, programming) or make me feel like I'm working for free (I think this is a negative thought) or not spending my little spare time very well (idly playing games instead of doing something more awesome, but STILL not work-like). I know what I'm supposed to do, which is going out (literally, or even to meet new people), which I do when given the opportunity, but I also want something that's mine, made by me, so I can show it off to people I meet, and that requires the dedication that I lost since I got a job which already makes me spend this kind of effort daily… but not for me, just for my money. Nowadays my mind is tainted that it takes a whole team to produce something substantial, and it's too bad I'm not really the networking type — I like doing stuff by myself, full-stack, without asking for help unless it becomes 'natural' to do so (e.g. my project has so many fans it becomes easy to ask for some help). I really need to get off this bad mindset: weren't Doom Builder and SLADE made by single persons? Well, SLADE did get help from Gez, but I like to think that it came naturally, without lots of pitching. They look mighty professional too. Do their authors feel miserable for spending so much time making them for free? I like to think they do NOT.

I'm considering porting Automatic Wolfenstein to DOS. This will allow me to both keep a low footprint on most data and be efficient, and more importantly, make it work wherever DOSBox can be installed (I can sidestep Android development by providing a DOS binary instead, for example. Currently I can run it on my phone, but performance sucks).

I've released an 'experimental' DOS binary here, however it requires Wolf3D 1.4 by Activision/GT. It also contains the source code (which is equivalent to Git commit 400bfcb 20130607 "Committed a tentative..."). It's a 16-bit binary built using Borland Turbo C 3. It's based on alpha01, which is older than the latest alpha02, and much older than the unstable Git builds.

Here's a demo video on map E1M1. Note that it uses the same robotic walking as alpha01 (I didn't port alpha02 or any Git revision to DOS, I wanted to start simple).[yt]04n72MSuZIA[/yt]

Changing C++11 of the SDL code to Borland C language was somewhat fun, because it resulted in streamlining of what was basically non-OOP static class code (I later changed that to OOP, but it was still working on singletons) into simple functions with either program or object-file scope.

However, I obviously had to face the limitations of the 16-bit segmented memory architecture. Since I work with lots of caches of 64x64 (map-sized) data, I'm going to consume a lot of space. I understand that I can use the 'far' qualifier if I want to get past the 64k near segment. Documentation on 16-bit unprotected programming seems quite low these days...

You may notice the performance penalty. Whenever the bot reaches an objective (item, secret wall), you'll observe a split-second lag. Pathfinding seems much slower here. Could it be that 'far' memory access is too slow? Currently it's storing the Dijkstra (in fact just breadth-first) search in a 4096-long priority queue that resides in the far memory.

Anyone with DOS knowledge can tell me how much code and how much data I can throw at a 16-bit program? :)

I'm getting 22 today. A new year is coming for me. I hope it will be helluva more fun that the previous one, considering I'm finishing this hard and unfun semester, and difficulty is going downhill from here. I hope I'll make more printed circuit boards in the new year (that's my non-Doom hobby for now), and that I get faster at PWAD editing too (I feel like I talk too much and provide too little in this department). I'm also going to participate in a robot-toy-car programming competition this year, where I need to make it learn a racing track and afterwards make it move by itself...

I hope it stays this way. Lately, I wondered why Doomworld shows at the top left pictures of the Doom Movie, but never of Doom 3 (WHAT!?!).

Then I changed the display settings, from the homepage, to something else. Then I changed them back to random, and now Yes, I can see Doom 3 monsters in the corner! Thankfully, this place is not populated only by Doom purists.

I finally got the curiosity for World of Warcraft (after reading lots of wowwiki, for the lore) so I downloaded my 10-day trial. And after a bunch of sessions, I can say I'm not impressed, at all.

The beginning of the game consisted of my character talking to static NPCs giving me standard kill/fetch/talk-to quests, each rewarded by something or something else. You pretty much know what you have to do, and the characters stand there all the time giving directions to all players coming to them.

At first I got quite a beating :( but it was because I was venturing outside my character level's scope. Unfortunately, once I met the monsters I was supposed to kill, I realized all I have to do is right click them and wait. Do the same a few more times, until the kill quest is done. It would have been cooler if these monsters attacked me first; but this was rather dumb. Actually, the killer monsters I mentioned before did seem to jump for me...

Is the game going to get more interesting and have epic intrigues, or is it the same till the end? Feels rather Diablo-ish to me, minus the features that make the Diablos great, such as demons galore and bloodshed. I don't get it how I could possibly become "an addict" to it. It may only be the curiosity to see new landscapes, but the all-too-familiar combat-and-fetch gameplay let me down. I've seen it in Diablo.

Of course, everyone is different and likes different crap, but what I'm trying to point here is that the "WoW addiction" didn't hit me. I hope it will hit me some time after I know what the real thing is like, though :(

I don't know if I'm supposed to say it here, but from yesterday (12/27) my virus scanner detected the w32/hllp.philis.bx virus on all executables of my computer (all detected as *.exe.exe though, not as simple *.exe) and resorted either to "cleaning" or "deleting" them. Some files weren't really "deleted", especially the ones officially installed. But some have been lost. I could find neither my favourite Doom executables (Eternity, Doom, Doomp, Doom2p), nor a hex editor I like using (zapit), nor mus2midi from XWE (which survived). Most "installed" software seemed intact, though I didn't check on everything.

Unfortunately after about three hours the infection was detected again, on all executables again.

I may mention that I changed my provider (and thus router) prior to catching this infection -- either this or it is the antivirus's fault: could it be that its scheduled scanning was being wrong? I hope it's only an antivirus error causing all this.

I have Windows XP SP3 by the way. And McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 7.0.0.

Maybe I should switch to another OS...? Or simply another antivirus? :)